What China Sees in Donald Trump—and in Itself

The current American Presidential election has been called many things: a pathetic, protracted joke; the great apocalyptic implosion; a dumpster fire; an unending nightmare; the best and the worst reality-television series ever made. But all of these labels, theatrical as they may be, pale in comparison to the terms that Chinese observers, in both official press outlets and on social media, have used in recent days to describe the Trump-Clinton standoff: as a spectacle of unfettered “chaos” that shakes their faith in the legitimacy of Western democracy.

The Chinese government’s public position is that it will not comment on the U.S. election. Nonetheless, in the days following the second Presidential debate, two of China’s most widely read state-run newspapers derided the election as a risible variety show run amok in which the candidates’ spectacular personal failings have taken precedence over the business of governance. The People’s Daily, which serves as the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, cited both Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns and Clinton’s e-mail-server troubles and noted, perhaps with a touch of schadenfreude, that “for a long time, the U.S. has boasted that its lively election is a sign of its system’s superiority.” It concluded, however, that “all the weirdness” of the candidates’ dealings not only clearly shows the “predicament of the U.S. political establishment, it also points straight at the corrupt practices of the U.S. political system.”

Increasingly, this sentiment has been echoed on WeChat, China’s most popular social-media platform, and across various forums in which the U.S. election is a subject of contentious discussion. “The Americans say this and say that, but their so-called democratic election is the international laughingstock,” a poster who identified himself as a twenty-three-year-old from Hebei Province wrote. “If having choice means choosing between two criminals for the White House, I think I’m O.K. going by luck,” another Beijing college student chimed in. In one particularly strident (but unsigned) article, titled “The Braggadocio of the American Election,” the American political apparatus was labelled “false, meaningless and a method of raping the people.” Listening to such sensationally hyperbolic language, one can’t help but think that it’s just the sort of line Trump himself would come up with.

Here, precisely, is where the rhetorical style of Trump, who has called his opponent “the devil” on national television and lambasted a neighboring nation as a wellspring of rapists, overlaps with the nationalist posturing of an authoritarian state. Riled by a state-sanctioned media whose propaganda promotes a single-party regime under the confused guise of patriotism, fervid jingoists, both young and old, are rising to defend the only system they know. Their first move is to attack anything that undermines their sense of the status quo, no matter how stagnant it has become. Put another way, they provide a reminder of how Trump and some of the strident voices heard in China today can start to sound alike. Trump, by telling lies and lobbing ever more non sequiturs, has successfully distracted a good part of America, and arguably the world, from focussing on the matter at hand: his incompetence and unsuitability for the position of President of the United States. Similarly, in criticizing the admittedly circus-like nature of the American election season, the Chinese government hopes to shift focus away from its singularly oppressive rule, one that has conferred economic prosperity and violated human rights.

And yet that very resemblance is a reminder that the United States, with its open electoral system and free press, is not China, or anything close. In an election rife with false equivalences, it is useful to remember that heedlessly comparing unwrinkled authoritarianism to imperfect representative rule is a perversion akin to Trump’s own manipulation of facts and exploitation of fear. While Trump may be a repugnant candidate to many, he still lives within a larger political structure that has, thus far, proved resistant to the metaphors, equivocations, and juxtapositions of strongmen, confusing—and, for some listeners, compelling—as they can be. His very repugnance to some may be the measure of a democracy doing its gruesome work. Those of us who live within it also have a voice, and a vote. And we have the world watching.